Over 250 FREE mini-love-lessons touching the lives of thousands in over 190 countries worldwide!

A Dozen Kinds of Love to Have in Your Life

Love is like a vital food. It nourishes and
energizes, helping one’s life to be healthy and full. Just as there are
many kinds of food there are many kinds of love. Just as each basic
food group gives us different major ingredients for healthy living so
does each kind of love. Here are a dozen kinds of love I recommend that
you consider growing and harvesting in your life’s garden.

1. Self Love To love others AS you LOVE YOURSELF is the ancient
admonition. Bernie Siegel, the famous cancer surgeon, says that if he
can teach a patient to love themselves and others their blood level of
cancer fighting cells raises. More research suggests that others tend
to ‘effectively’ love you only to the degree you love yourself.
Developing your self love abilities can be one of the most important
things you ever do.

2. Friendship Love A host of studies show that much higher rates of illness and
death from illness, accidents and suicide occur among those who lack a
supporting network of loving friends. Active involvement with loving
friends (not just acquaintances) is a major way to increase enjoyment
and health in life.

3. Family Love Similar to deep friendship love, love between siblings,
relatives and even the new family member called an “Ex” has been found
vitally important to staying healthy, to recovery from illness, and to
life enhancement.

4. Parental Love Without love behaviors being shown to infants they tend to die
of wasting away diseases in the first year of life (although they are
otherwise well taken care of); so do monkeys and most other mammals.
Adults well loved by parents achieve higher quality of life ratings
sooner and more easily than others.

5. Child to Parent Love This form of love starts from a kind of ‘need love’ but can grow to a very enriching part of a “love-feedback-loop”.

6. Lover Love Lover (spouse, love mate) love is the type of love our western
world culture both emphasizes most and seems to have the most trouble
with. It also is the type most easily confused with false forms of
love, and the type that may take the most work. Never-the-less it’s a
very special, important, and highly health & happiness producing
kind of love.

7. Love of a Special Identity Group Some people manifest a love of Country, others a love of tribe
or clan, others a love of their Alma Mater, town, or a group that holds
particular values or ways of being. Little research has been done on
this kind of love but acts of strong and pervasive love are known to
occur in this area.

8. Cross-species Love Having a loving relationship with one or more pets has been
shown to improve immunity factors in the blood, lengthen life and even
greatly improve and speed recovery from surgery. Mammals seem to work
the best in this capacity and return love behaviors most.

9. ‘Philio’ Love (there are several spellings of this word)
Love of human kind or people, sometimes called brotherly love, and what
ancient Greeks identified as “philio” love is just beginning to be
studied. Hous Lelye, the famous stress researcher, calls it altruistic
egoism and found it very important to extending healthful living.

10. Love of Nature Looking at nature (even at pictures of nature), taking care of
green plants and a love/appreciation of nature has been found effective
in stimulating immunological responses, tissue repair, and maintaining
biochemical balance in people.

11. Love of Life Some people seem to have a love relationship with all things
that live. A number of philosophers, theologians and theoretical
scientists have speculated that love may be the prime force of life
itself.

12. Spiritual Love From research into the highly self-actualizing, to studies of
the underprivileged and disadvantaged (which include cross-cultural
studies) come findings that people involved in various forms of
spiritual love actions lived healthier (both mentally and physically)
than their counterparts. A sort of ‘universal love’ element intrinsic
to one’s spirituality seems to have considerable potency for healthful,
happy living.

As always – Grow with love.

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
Will you pick one of the above dozen kinds of love to have in
your life and perhaps decide to strengthen it by meditation, or
journaling, or researching, or making an action plan and carrying out
those actions concerning that kind of love?

Affiliations

Subscribe To This Blog

Whatislovedrcookerly.com is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.